Faith, Faith is an Island in the Setting Sun
But Proof is the Bottom Line for Everyone

Some of you might be wondering, quite legitimately, why I chose to make a new post rather than just edit this screenshot into my other post. There are a number of reasons for this:
1. My inflated sense of self-importance likes having my word count be the first thing people see.
2. I was afraid that, if I attempted to put it into my other post, I might inadvertently fry the other post (this is, after all, the first time I've ever put a photo in a blog post).
3. Fuck you.

Done ... Until The Sequel!



My novel by the numbers:

Words: 50 065
Pages: 128
Chapters: 20
Interludes: 3
Chapters titled Bacon out of respect to Matt: 1
Amount of bacon consumed (in meals worth): 1
Amount of time it took me to type an average 1000 words in minutes: 40
Amount of time used for each 1000 words in minutes: 60 (lots of internet surfing)
Fastest 1000 words in minutes: 20
Number of almost rapes: 1
Number of implied sex scenes: 1
Number of those sex scenes between two computers: 1
"On screen" deaths: 11 (although the first couple are arguable)
Crazy Computers: 1 (um, wait, no that's a spoiler for the sequel!)
Number of long lost loves: 1
Number of Space Elevators: 2
Number of Space Ships: 2
Amount of time, in words, spent underground: 15 000
Number of 2 000 km tunnels: 2
Number of Ninjas that Attacked: 0
Limbs cut off: 5
Number of times the story was e-mailed to myself: 10
Is the novel good or bad, good being one and bad being 0: 0
Number of novels written more than the number written by Mr. Digby Sellars: 1

Take that!



Yes, my friends and other interested observers: I have passed 50,000 words. As I understand the rules, this officially makes me a better person than all of you. Well, except for Steve. And probably Dan later.

I'm not quite done yet, though: I still have to write the last chapter. So for now, I bid you adieu.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

EDIT NOW THAT I'M DONE THE LAST CHAPTER (which happened at around 11:30pm)

Bloodthirsty by the numbers:

Words: 51,166
Pages (even though this is meaningless until it's formatted properly): 119
Chapters: 20
Average chapter length in words: 2558
Longest chapter: 11 (4566 words)
Worst chapter: 11
Shortest chapter: 17 (1064 words)
Occurrences of the word "fuck" (or its derivatives): 31
Occurrences of the word "fuck" (or its derivatives) in chapter 6: 14
Occurrences of the word "fuck" (or its derivatives) in paragraph 3 of page 33: 13
Words in paragraph 3 of page 33: 35
Occurrences of the word "tits": 2
Occurrences of the word "baseball": 2
Words about Tetris: 592
Occurrences of the word "Tetris": 0
Characters shot in the stomach: 1
Total amount of time spent in hospital due to being shot in the stomach (in seconds): 0
Different TV shows or movies jokes were stolen borrowed from: at least 6
Occurrences of the word "blood": 116
Most productive day, in words: 3030 (May 29)
Least productive day, in words: 0 (several)
Least productive day that something was actually written, in words: 50 (May 13)
Dirty jokes I refrained from making in this list because they would have been too big a spoiler: 1
Number of times better than Chris Samuel I am (approximate): 1023

I Interrupt My Shameful Neglect of This Blog...

...to announce that I'm done. 50,010 words of novel at 6:51 this morning, not including title page, chapter headings, "the end", or anything else that anybody might try to claim doesn't count. I have a screenshot of my word count, but me USB key seems to have died on my, so I have no way of getting said screenshot from my laptop to a computer with an internet connection. So for now you'll just have to take my word for it.

I'm a novelist. Not a good novelist, mind you. The kind of novelist who would probably be rejected by the Romance Writers' Guild of America for "cliched writing" and "lack of oringality in plots". But still: a motherfucking novelist! A novelist! Who fucks mothers! In our cities! In Canada!

For those of you - that beiong Jake and Dan - who are close to finishing and who are sustaining yourselves largely on the anticipation of the euphoria that will hit when you finish, let me assure you that it's everything you imagined it would be and more. And I imagine this is true even if you haven't just consumed three times the recommended maximum daily intake of Full Throttle energy drink. Go hard, dammit!

And now, Queen on repeat.

Final Week Word Count List

Okay, since Steve is being a dinkwallet about this, here is how we'll work this without him. I'll post my word count here and then you guys post yours in the comments (as well as when they were applicable for). I will then update them in the post. You can update as much as you want, seeing as this is the last week and we should have a more active word count thingy going on. Anyway:

• Daniel Kaszor: 46 002 as of Tuesday, May 30 at 9:40pm. Words tomorrow needed to finish: 3998.DONE!

• Jake Troughton: 48 777 as of Wednesday, May 31 at 12:05am. Words per day needed to finish: 1333.DONE!

• Steve Smith 40 000 as of Tuesday, May 30 at 12:15pm. Words per day needed to finish: 5000.DONE!

• Heather Smith: 7125 as of Thursday, May 25 at 10:30pm. Words per day needed to finish: 7145.

• Scott Lilwall: 20 014 as of Monday, May 22 at 7:14pm. Words per day needed to finish (at that point): 3000.

(Note, I'm pretty sure that Lilwall hasn't actually written since last Monday, so his wpdntf is probably much higher now. Also, does anyone else notice that Word's live word counter gets spazzy after about 30 000 words? I sure did).

Excellent

Yet another one of my characters has become a murderous villain. Oh joy.

The greatest SNES games circa right now

Since Steve mentioned something about how his SNES emulator was a constant source of distraction, I've decided to whip up my personal list of the greatest SNES games of right now. So these are all games that are still fun to play, and not necessarily the most influential or important when they came out. Also certain games have been obsoleted a lot more than others. Anyway, without further ado ...


10. Tetris Attack

Known also as Puzzle League this game actually has nothing at all to do with Tetris other than the fact that it's a puzzle game. It is, however, amazing addicting. You have to flip panels so that they match in colours. Sounds simple. It isn't.

9. Tetris/Dr. Mario

The greatest puzzle game ever, mixed with the puzzle game your mom can't stop playing! What's not to love?

8. Final Fantasy VI (released as Final Fantasy III in North America)

This one would probably rank higher if this list was put together in 1995. RPGs have advanced to a point where going back and playing this type of old style game, with its way too frequent simple battles and giant plot holes, is tough. But still, it's just so epic!

7. Mega Man X

This game probably has the best balance of bad guy abilities to grab of all the Mega Man games other than perhaps Mega Man 2 or Mega Man 3 for the NES (when there are literally 20 mainstream Mega Man games, this is actually a complement). The controls are tight and the addition of the wall grab and bad guy weapons that could be powered up added to the game. Also, it had some easy levels to cut your teeth on followed by some totally hard, but not impossible levels. Truly a side scrolling classic.

6. Mario Kart

Still totally fun after all of these years. Another game that would rank higher if not for far superior sequels. Although, honestly, who doesn't love that old school battle mode with just two people?

5. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

Though, it probably isn't the best Zelda any more (that honour goes to Ocarina of Time), in my mind it stands up. This was the first game I ever actually played all the way through on an emulator, which was strange because I had the real game sitting in a closet next to me. I also finished the excellent GBA port of the game as well. Actually I think I've beaten this game at least twelve times all told.

4. Super Metroid

Still the best Metroid game (or even Metroid style game) ever made, and probably the only 2D platformer that is able to seriously wig you out with its mood and ambiance. The game is a touch short if you know where to go, but for first timers it's a true treat. And remember folks, even though Mother Brain looks dead, she isn't dead till she's dead.

3. Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger holds up much better than its Squaresoft brother FFVI/III because it does away with some of the dumber conventions of Japanese RPGs. The skipable, less frequent and more fun battles, and the fact that everything happens on one screen, make the game intensely playable. There are so many cool little moments in the game that make you just want to keep playing.

2. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

Although I'm still torn about its postmodern storybook look, and I find the mechanic of throwing eggs to be a bit clunky, this sequel to Super Mario World is downright huge, and contains some of the best platforming on any console ever. The last boss fight is amazing. Why aren't you playing it right now?

1. Super Mario Allstars + World

Yes, this is sort of a cop out, but the cart containing Super Mario 1, 2, 3, Lost Levels and World is one of the greatest game carts ever created, if not the greatest. I would probably rank at least two of the games contained higher than anything else on this list all by themselves (Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World) and the rest would be close behind. If there is one SNES game to play, this is it.

Why I oughta...

I'm finally starting to make actual progress on this thing, and I'm rocking along today, which is great. Before I get back to it, though, I feel it's important to let everyone know that I'm currently writing a fight scene, and I just started it off with references to the Three Stooges. Therefore, I'm a better person than you. QED.

Where is the word count?

I want to know how far behind I am as the final week approaches.

After almost three weeks I'm ready to make my list

You know those lists we were supposed to make at the beginning about things we do and don't like in stories. Well after getting over a major hate-on for my novel, I think I'm ready to make my list.

Things I like and want to continue in my novel:

• Action sequences held in the moment.
  
• Sequences about settings or moments in time reflected through the lens of a character
  
• Reflections on Characters' moods or feelings as exposed through internal dialogue

Things I don't like and want to avoid as much as possible:

• Dialogue, especially plot oriented expository dialogue
  
• Plot oriented expository sequences in general

Man, I might write 50 000 words, but there is almost no way I'll be done the story by that point. This is exacerbated by the fact that I find moving the plot forward painful.

Your opinion, please.

Alright, so Steve has already told me that he doesn't think I'll be able to finish the novel. I'm at around 7000 words right now. What do you guys think (keeping in mind the fact that I have a pair of jobs)?

How do you name your characters?

The above question is directed both to those few of you who remain in the running, and to anyone else who might have something useful to contribute. You see, I have no idea how to name my characters, and I keep coming up with boring monikers that are distinguished in no way besides happening to be the first that came to my head. Does anyone else find that they have a feel for what a character's name "should" be, or anything of that sort, or are we all in the same boat here?

Because this is actually all about winning ...

... I've decided to remind the other NoWriMoers who own a Nintendo DS, especially frontrunner Jake, and to a slightly lesser extent backrunner Nick, that New Super Mario Bros. came out today.

Threshold of competence

So, I've upped my threshold of work from 2000 words per day to 3000 words per day. (before when I did a day I would be happy when I hit 2000, that mark is now 3000)

I've done this because while I'm fairly sure I can do 12 000 words a week at 2000 per day, that is no longer enough for me to finish, hence the upped count. Let's see how this goes!

Sort Kind of Almost Half-Way Done

The field's thinning a little bit.

Jake Troughton - 21,452
Steve Smith - 17,232
Daniel Kaszor - 13,013
Nick Tam - 5,838
Theresa Chapman - 3,269
Natalie Climenhaga - 518
Arthur Digby Sellars - 0


Catrin Berghoff, Chris O'Leary, Sarah Bidanjiri, and Chris Samuel have quit. Additionally, Tim Peppin (who, let the record show, is a delinquent shithead) has been disqualified unilaterally for failing to submit word counts during two consecutive weeks.

Nothing yet from Scott Lilwall, Heather Smith, Nadia Rushdy, Chloe Fedio, Shawna Pandya, Michelle Kelly, Matt Frehner, or Donald Heitzman, but I'll update you as they update me.

"But the rest of you, hang in there!", she said insincerely, since of course she wanted them to fail just as miserably as she had.

I am saddened to announce my shameful failure at this endeavour.

I'm out.

Sorry, all. If we ever do this again, I'll try once more, but I made the mistake of not having an idea. I failed to tailor my novel to my strengths, and the result is horrible.

If anyone else who failed wants to join me in a bonfire in my backyard...no, wait, the burning books thing might not fly what with my nationality and all.

On the Counting of Words

I was just browsing the official NaNoWriMo forums, and discovered that they generally operate with a very liberal view of what should count toward the 50,000 words. So the question now becomes: how long can you reasonably make your title?

I was contemplating calling mine Bloodthirsty, even though it totally doesn't fit thematically, but it's only one word, so to hell with that. Now, I'm thinking of something more like The Vampire Who Survived a Genocide, Then Went Into Hiding For Nearly Three Centuries, Living Among Humans In a Peaceful and Respectful Fashion Because He is Basically a Decent Sort of Guy, but Who Was Always Afraid of Being Discovered and Who, Upon Finally In Fact Being Discovered, Had to Deal With the Perhaps Understandable but Nonetheless Unfair and Inappropriate Fear and Hatred that Many Members of the Human Race Directed Toward Him, and Also, He is Very Good at Playing Tetris, Though That Fact Is Not Really Explored Very Much in This Particular Story.

And then there's the subtitle to deal with.

Interactive Fun-Time Bonanza

Fun times were certainly had by all at Keegan's last night, where by "all" I mean "me, Steve, Catrin, and briefly Shawna." I didn't write near as much I'd hoped while there, only about 1100 words, but it was a pivotal moment in the story, so I don't feel too bad about not blasting through it.

I post, though, because I want to pose two questions to the group. Please do respond.

Question the First: In the space of one paragraph, I increased my novel's "fuck" count from three to 16 (it's now 17), putting the figure somewhere in the neighbour of Steve's, last I heard. How many times does the word "fuck" or its variants appear in your novel?

Question the Second: My favourite line I wrote last night, which Steve seemed to appreciate, was the following piece of dialogue: "Okay, so what do I do if there is an impromptu garlic-throwing festival?" What's your favourite line you've written in the last couple days?

Quote of the Evening

"I haven't seen any of my characters naked - yet."
(S. M. Smith)

How crazy is this comment?

Let me count the ways...

"Have you ever noticed that you can never come up with a good joke under pressure? Of course you have. Everybody has. That observation was one of the least interesting observations ever made, and I apologize for it."

As my novel hits the eighteen thousand word mark, I can't help but to be a little depressed by it. Not because it's bad. I knew it would be bad. But I never expected it to be this formulaic.

The formula?

High Fidelity - obsession with music and lists - wit - everything else that makes High Fidelity good + electoral politics = Steve's novel

Anybody else have sources of inspiration that are becoming uncomfortably apparent to you over the course of your novel?

Before I started my novel, even before I had even the smallest semblance of a plot worked out, I had one goal in mind: I want to kill my main character off in the first chapter. I figured that doing so would force me to come up with a plot of some sort, simply to work around the fact that my main focus of the novel would cease to exist before Chapter Two.

It is then, with sadness, that I announced the death of Greg Ryder. He passed away on Sunday, May 2^nd, at about the 5000 word mark. Friend. Son. Couch Insurance Salesman.

Greg survived an elaborate scheme put in place by Fate to cause his death by way of fried eggs and a pizza delivery. Barely escaping demise by that manner, he was sadly gunned down by the love of his life on the way back to his office.

He is survived by a Donald Duck desk clock, and a rat with a weakness for Frosted Flakes.

Please join me in a silent moment of reflection, as well as a longer moment of "what the hell am I going to do with my novel now?"

Finally, I beat my fifteen-year-old self

Well today I passed 6532 words which was where my last attempt at fiction ended almost ten years ago. That attempt dealt with detention, young weddings, child abuse, and um, alternate realities.

In other news, I finally figured a way around having only one character ... introducing another character I hadn't planned on showing up for another 5000 words and having a good chunk of the story flow from her perspective. Writing from this character's point of view removes a lot of the mystery I had intended for her when she initially showed up, but opens up a lot of interesting story directions.

So, have any of you changed the perspective that your story is being told from to spice things up?

A Word of Advice

Based on the word counts listed below, I get the impression that the last thing any of you need to be doing right now is procrastinating. So with that in mind, whatever you do, do not go here.

The (Partial) Week One Standings

Here's where we sit after week one:

Steve Smith - 11,486
Jake Troughton - 10,225
Scott Lilwall - 8,565
Catrin Berghoff - 8,551
Daniel Kaszor - 6,235
Chris O'Leary - 5,765
Heather Smith - 4,508
Nadia Rushdy - 4,500 (estimated - she's writing by hand)
Nick Tam - 3,448
Chloe Fedio - 3,134
Sarah Bidanjiri - 1,607
Shawna Pandya - 1,101
Michelle Kelly - 1,000
Matt Frehner - 630 (17 of which are "bacon")
Donald Heitzman - 546
Natalie Climenhaga - 312
Arthur Digby Sellars - 0

Adam Rozenhart and Joel Chury have quit.

As yet, I've received nothing formal from Theresa Chapman, Tim Peppin, or Chris Samuel (but, if I do, I'll edit this post to reflect that).

Also note that, among reporters, I'm the only one on pace to finish this bastard. Step it up, people!

Wikipedia is proving itself to be a useful tool for expediting the writing process. Observe: I have an early scene at an English country house. I wanted to put together what, in film, they call the "establishing shot" - the immediate sensory contact with the scene being set so you know where you are, and so does the reader. Unfortunately, I knew next to nothing about English country houses apart from their presence in a few episodes of my favourite television show, The Avengers, where megalomaniacal villains would often hang out in manors. (A comedy of manors, if you will.)

So I typed wp English country house in the Firefox address bar, and shazam! Wikipedia to the rescue, the block-breaking superhero anyone can edit. And just like that, I had the word "Palladian" at my fingertips.

Factual accuracy or neutral points of view be damned; for our purposes, we just need a verbal chain of associations, the fewer clicks away the better. If it feels like novelists ordinarily require a lot more time to draft something, keep in mind that once upon a time, they had to sit around in libraries for weeks just to pretend to know what they were talking about. Now it takes all of two minutes to grab some technical (but accessible) terminology and force it into a proper descriptive context. Take that as encouragement.

Plot start now please

Is anyone else finding that they are just typing away at their story and nothing has happened yet? I'm just finding it really hard to move the story from boring expository scenes to ones where something happens, but at the same time the whole thing won't make sense unless I slog through. AGG! Oh well.

UPDATE: My favorite sentence from today (note I said "favorite," not "best" or even "a good"):

"This wasn’t especially surprising considering the he had almost died in a multitude of different ways, not the least of which was dodging a virus that had essentially wiped out the human race, but it was worrying none the less."

Need a random word?

I was speaking to Catrin earlier today, and she told me that when she's stuck, she'll open up her dictionary and pick a random word, which she then has to work into the story. That idea struck me as not half bad, but I frequently don't have access to a paper dictionary while I'm writing, and even when I do it's hard to truly pick a random word. Enter the Random Word Generator. I'm going to give this a shot. My random word: warranty.

Chapter 4: Thomas goes to Future Shop.

Below her, the world was no longer partitioned into squares and rectangles.

So, what are your opening lines?

It appears that I'm not able to title my post. Anyway, it's late and I've hit a writer's block. All of my characters are horrible people, either intentionally or unintentionally, except for the drug dealer who has an apparent obsession with penguins. Maybe there will be a flood of some kind and most of them will die. Depends how desperate I get.

The Official Daniel Kaszor Distraction Centre

Okay, now that I'm set up at my parents place, I have instituted a room set-up that is anti-work to the highest degree.

First picture:


You will note the television is hooked into a input splitter box so that I can a) play PS2 b) play GameCube c) play Xbox (not yet hooked up) or d) watch things I've downloaded onto my computer. Additionally you'll note the Nintendo DS in the picture as well. Now let's look at the room from another angle:


Yes, what you see there is indeed a second television, this time with a DVD player, a VCR and cable (although the DVD player is a touch redundant because I can just play movies through my laptop to the first TV).

Man I'm going to get a lot of work done on this thing!

What exactly defines a novel from a book? Because although I have a number of words... I have a feeling that Im not writing a novel.

So, what do you define as a novel?

This Concept is Awesome

I typed by 5497th word a few minutes ago. I decided to see, out of curiosity, how this compared to my progress on my most recent serious attempt at novelling, and the one that (I think) had made it the furthest. The answer? My previous attempt had made it no further than 2833.

This isn't the longest thing I've ever written - I wrote a paper this year that tipped the scales at 3169 words, the longest bylaw I ever wrote for the S.U. was of a length comparable to my present nascent novel, and my S.U. Exit Report weighed in at a decidedly meatier 13670 words - but it's been three fucking days.

Seriously: I'm beginning to question why anybody would decide to take more than a month on a first draft.

Question: howmany of you know approximately how your novel will end? Catrin and I were having a little writing powow tonight, and she told me that she's making everything up as she goes along. Meanwhile, I've had an outline (a very rough outline, but one that captured the essence of my whole story arc) since not long after I decided to do this (though I haven't decided yet whether my protagonist will get back together with the bitch that dumps him in the first chapter). Which one of us is more typical?

I think I'm Really Getting the Hang of This Thing

Yesterday, a character for whom I hadn't planned and for whom I had no spare room came barging uninvited into my story. I'm coping.

Question: how many of you are writing this on laptops? We should schedule some kind of event where we all meet in SUB or somewhere to hammer out two thousand words each. Who'd be interested?

So how's everybody doing?

Myownself, I got to 1313 words after day one, 300 behind schedule. Whose brilliant idea was it to do this during the NHL playoffs?

Also, to finally answer Steve's (offline) question definitively: my novel is not about vampires. It is about a single vampire.

The Horses Take to the Gates

And what a great many horses there are - twenty-one, to be exact. If normal NaNoWriMo success rates take effect, the world should have three new novels come May 31, and I see no reason to believe that this group of luminaries shouldn't blow normal NaNoWriMo success ratios out of the water.

Participants are:

Catrin Berghoff
Natalie Climenhaga
Sarah Bidanjiri
Joel Chury
Chloé Fedio
Matt Frehner
Donald Heitzman
Dan Kaszor
Michelle Kelly
Arthur Digby Sellars (not his real name - his real name rhymes with "pan raisin")
Scott Lilwall
Chris O'Leary
Shawna Pandya
Tim Peppin
Adam Rozenhart
Nadia Rushdy
Chris Samuel
Heather Smith
Steve Smith
Nicholas Tam
Jake Troughton

A special welcome, incidentally, to Sarah Bidanjiri, the only NaNoWriMo U of A Edition participant who has nothing to do with the U of A.

Also, not to brag, but I'm already at 1700 words, and I'm in the middle of moving. Neener.